You no doubt find it easy enough to recognize and to encourage ideals that are in harmony with your own, or that seem to you worthy and likely to have a favorable influence upon your child's career or character. When five-year-old Freddy says that he wants to become a lawyer or a doctor, you encourage him. You say, "That's fine, my boy," and in your mind's eye you see him climbing to fame and fortune. But when Freddy says that he wants to be a policeman and marry the candy-lady, you laugh at him, and you certainly do not encourage him. But in Freddy's mind doctor and lawyer mean no more than policeman; they involve no more important social service, they mean no more dignity in personal position, they suggest nothing more of anything that is worth while. For whatever it is that Freddy wants to be at any moment is to him the sum of all that is to him worth while—and that is just what an ideal ought to be.
This is not a plea to cruel parents in behalf of smoothing Freddy's path toward the coveted post—or the course of his courtship of the candy-lady's daughter. It is simply an effort to point out how important it is to avoid shattering early in life that precious mirror in which alone visions are to be seen. When you have ridiculed the policeman out of further consideration, you are likely with the same act to have weakened Freddy's faith in ideals—and to this extent you have loosened one of the safest props of his character. We need not be afraid of the crude and short-sighted ideals of the young child. With the growth of his experience his ideals will expand. We should fear rather to infect him with the vulgar disrespect for all ideals.
In a few years Freddy has his heart set on charting the blank spaces on his geography map, and he has never a thought for the girls. It is the same Freddy, but he has in the meanwhile roamed far from the home neighborhood—in imagination—and has discovered new heroes and new types of heroism. The policeman and the candy-lady are still at their old posts, but Freddy ignores them because his ideals have grown with his experience and his information, as well as with his bodily growth and development.
Study of thousands of children in all parts of this country, in England and in Germany, has shown that the young people begin to form ideal images of what they consider desirable, or beautiful, or right rather early in life. They form ideals of virtue as well as ideals of happiness, and these ideals reflect their experiences and their surroundings to a remarkable degree. Thus, there are differences between the ideals formed by country children and those formed by city children, between the ideals of poor children and those of wealthy ones, between the ideals of English children and those of American or German children. But, aside from all these differences, it is found that the ideals vary with the sex of the child, and also with the age, so that each child passes through a series of stages marked by characteristic types of ideals.
As early as the age of nine years children have expressed themselves as looking forward to "doing good" in the world, or to making themselves "good." The age at which this impulse to service or to personal perfection may take form must depend upon many things besides the peculiar characteristics of the individual child. Jessie's ideals concerning "being good" will be shaped by what she hears and sees about her. If you speak frequently about the foreign missions, she may think of being good as something that has to do with the heathen. If the family conversation takes into consideration the sick and the needy, Jessie's ideal may be dressed like a Red Cross nurse. If you never speak of the larger problems of community welfare, or of social needs, or of moral advance in the home, where Robert has a chance to hear you, he can get suggestions toward such ideals only after he has read enough to become acquainted with these problems and the corresponding lines of service for himself.
Answers received from hundreds of girls and boys would seem to show that virtue and goodness are desirable to children at a certain stage of their development chiefly, if not solely, because they bring material or social benefits. Virtue is rewarded not by any internal or spiritual satisfaction, but by freer access to the candy supply or to the skating pond. The right is that which is allowable, or that which may be practiced with impunity. The wrong is that which is forbidden or punishable. Of course, this attitude toward moral values should not continue through life. We should do what we can to establish higher ideals of right and wrong. How soon this change will come must depend very largely on where the emphasis is laid by those around the child. If, when you give Robert a piece of candy, you always impress him with the idea that this is his compensation for having been "good," he will retain this association between virtue and material reward long past the age when he can already appreciate the satisfaction that comes from exercising his instinct to be helpful, or from doing what he thinks is right. If, however, the idea in the home is that all goes well and all feel cheerful and happy because every one is trying to do the right thing, the various indulgences and liberties will mean to the child merely the material manifestations of the good feeling that prevails, and not rewards of virtue. So far as possible, rewards and punishments should be directed toward the deed and not the child. The aim should be to make the child derive his highest satisfaction from carrying out his own ideals of conduct, rather than from the reward for that conduct. The approbation of those he honors and loves should gradually replace the material reward.
To the child the ideal of success may mean two entirely different things. At one stage it may mean the satisfaction of accomplishing a set task, whether selected by himself or imposed by some one else. Later, it comes to mean excelling some other child in a contest. Even a child of four or five years gets a great deal of satisfaction from contemplating a house he has built out of his blocks, or the row of mud pies. This satisfaction gradually comes to be something quite distinct from the pleasure of doing, and is an important element in the ideal of workmanship. As the child grows older the ideal of successful accomplishment grows stronger, and, if it is retained throughout life, it contributes a large share toward the individual's happiness.
Most of the school activities of our children lay too much emphasis upon the ideal of successful rivalry, and too little upon the ideal of high achievement. The ideal set before the children is not frequently enough that of doing the best that is in them, and too frequently that of doing merely better than the neighbor—which may be poor enough. Some of the work done with children in clubs, outside of schools, has brought out the instinct for an ideal of achievement in a very good way. Richard came home quite breathless when he was able to report that he could start a fire on a windy day, using but a single match! In some of the more modern organizations, for girls as well as for boys, graded tasks are assigned as tests of individual proficiency or prowess. Every girl and every boy must pass these standards, without regard to what the others do. The result of encouraging this ideal is likely to be an increased sense of responsibility, well as an increased self-respect; whereas the ideal of "beating" others may in many cases keep the girl or boy at a rather low level of achievement, compared to the child's own capacity.
This competitive ideal is illustrated by the girl who is ambitious to stand at the head of her class, and receives encouragement enough. But we give very little thought to the child whose ideals are for service to others or to the community. It is very often the same child that at one time glories in successful emulation under the encouragement of our approval, and that later fails to develop the germs of altruistic ideals because we fail to recognize, or at least to encourage, them. We cannot expect from the schools an early change of emphasis from the competitive type of ambition to the ideal of cooperation or service, although the teachers who have tried to encourage the latter have found the school work to proceed more satisfactorily than it does under the spirit of emulation. But in the home it should be much easier to encourage these higher types of ideals, for we do not have to set one child against the other, and there is greater opportunity for individual service on account of the greater differences in the ages and attainments of the children.
It is interesting and significant that, of the thousands of children who have given expression to their ideals and ambitions, a very small number—less than one in every hundred—have appeared to be quite content with themselves and with their surroundings. The normal child craves for some thing better, and roams as far afield as his knowledge and opportunities let him in his search for the best. It is during the years from the tenth to the fifteenth or sixteenth that this search is keenest, and during this period we should present to the children every opportunity for becoming acquainted with what has been considered best in the history of the race. The reading that the boy or girl does at this time is perhaps the most important source of ideals.